આપણાં મૂળ
The Patidar story — from ancient farmers of the northern plains to a global community of builders.
Every Patidar family carries a journey measured not in miles but in millennia. Before we were Patels of the Charotar, we were Kanbis of Gujarat; before that, Kurmis of the northern plains. This is the road our ancestors walked.
Every people keeps a story of its beginning. Ours reaches to Ayodhya: to Lav and Kush, the twin sons of Lord Ram. From Lav’s line, tradition says, descend the Leuva Patidars — our own branch, and that of the six villages — and from Kush’s the Kadva Patidars. Two brothers, two branches, one family: the legend encodes a truth the community has always lived by, that Leuva and Kadva are kin.
Each branch carries its mother-goddess. The Kadva heartland beats at Unjha, around the great temple of Umiya Mataji; among Leuvas, devotion to Khodiyar Maa and the village Matas travelled with every migration — as our own Bhadran, founded beside the shrine of Bhadrakali, remembers.
History tells a parallel story. The Patidars descend from the Kurmis — the great peasant-farmer communities of north India. Community histories record Kurmi clans in the Punjab, in districts remembered as Leu and Karad; as families migrated south they carried those names with them, and Leu Kurmi and Karad Kurmi softened, over centuries and dialects, into Leuva and Kadva. Pressed by invasion after invasion through the northwest, the Kurmis moved — through Marwad and Rajasthan, down into the safe, rich lands of Gujarat, where they became known simply as Kanbis: the cultivators.
Gujarat’s Solanki kings prized them above all settlers, for wherever Kanbis went, wastes became gardens. Tradition remembers Ramji Patel leading six hundred families to Adalaj; from there the Leuva Kanbis fanned out through the Kaira country into the Charotar — and it is no accident that Karamsad’s own founder, Aja Patel, came from Hilod near Adalaj in 1211. The six villages of Chha Gam are not bystanders to this history; they are its destination.
Tradition traces the community to Lav and Kush, the twin sons of Lord Ram of Ayodhya. From Lav’s line, the story goes, came the Leuva; from Kush’s, the Kadva — two branches of one family, a kinship every Patidar still carries in the name of his or her branch.
History’s telling begins with the Kurmis — skilled peasant-farmers of the northern plains. Community histories trace their road through the Punjab, where Kurmis of the Leu country and the Karad country would in time give their district names to the Leuva and Kadva branches.
Wave after wave of invasion presses through the northwest. Seeking land and peace, Kurmi families drift south and east over the centuries — through Rajasthan and Marwad — carrying their ploughs, their seed-knowledge and their goddess with them.
In Gujarat the newcomers become Kanbis — the cultivator folk. Kadva Kanbis root themselves in north Gujarat and make Unjha their heart, raising the temple of Umiya Mataji, their family goddess, which anchors the Kadva world to this day.
Two of our six already stand as old towns of the Charotar, awaiting their Patidar chapters: Nadiad, then called Natpur — town of the rope-dancers, with its lore of nine gates and nine ponds — and Sojitra, founded in tradition by Sojan Rabari, whose Sojanpur slowly became Sojitra.
Gujarat’s golden age. Tradition holds that Ramji Patel led some six hundred Kurmi families to Adalaj at royal invitation, and from Adalaj the Leuva Kanbis spread through Bhal, Khambhat and the Kaira country — into the fertile crescent they would make famous: the Charotar. One by one, our six villages now enter the story.
Dharmaj is founded: Narshibhai Patel of Jargal settles in Vikram Samvat 1212 and raises the village’s first quarter — known ever after as Juni Khadki, the Old Khadki, because it was first of them all. Its ground is today’s Sardar Chowk. In 1675 Rangaji Patel of Virol (Sojitra) joins, and from his 1,400-household line grow the four younger khadkis — Vachli, Kadujini, Kakani and Athamni.
Nadiad’s Patidar chapter opens: Jesti Patel, first Patidar of the old town of Natpur, settles in Vikram Samvat 1213 — forefather of the quarters of Kakarkhad, Alhadvago, Ratanji Hirji and Lakhawad. Kheta Patel follows in Samvat 1516.
Vaso is founded in Vikram Samvat 1224 by Vaccha Patel, named — tradition records — for a temple already standing there. His descendants Aju and Lalji earn the honorific Amin, and Patidar Vaso branches into twelve khadkis whose Amin and Desai families later fill it with Gujarat’s finest carved havelis.
Bhadran is founded as Bhadrapur beside the shrine of Bhadrakali Mata — the goddess who, with Ambaji, slew the demon brothers of Padampur in the village’s founding legend. Its Patel line arrives in Samvat 1415 (c. 1357) with the brothers Kalidas and Ananda of Anklav; eleven generations later Revandas & Dhanjibhai found Moti Khadki and Harkhjibhai & Manjibhai found Nani Khadki.
Karamsad — recorded since Kumarpal’s reign around 1155 — gains its Patidar founder: Aja Patel of Hilod, near Adalaj itself, whose arrival makes the fields flourish. His line — through Kupa Patel and the four sons of Mahijibhai — branches into Karamsad’s six khadkis: Bhayni, Bapni, Hathibhaini, Motabhaini, Jini and Chhatthi. Seven centuries on, this soil raises Sardar Patel.
Sojitra’s Patidar charter: the Gujarat Sultan Muzaffar Shah grants the town’s lands in hereditary tenure to Jeshangbhai Patel, son of Vitabhai. His seven heirs — Harakjibhai, Sunderbhai, Bhuderbhai, Saudasbhai, Amabaidas, Pragdas and Mahidas — found the seven khadkis, completing the settlement of the six villages.
Kanbi headmen become the state’s indispensable men. The village record-keeper of the pat — the land ledger — is the patlikh, and the word wears down into Patel. Under the Mughals the ablest families hold pati — hereditary shares of the village land and its revenue duty — and the holder of a pati is a Patidar.
In the Kheda country the Leuva villages build the narwadari and bhagdari systems — brotherhoods of co-sharers who answer for the village revenue together, shielding one another from tax-farmer and famine alike. It is self-rule at the village scale, and it forges the Patidar habit of collective enterprise.
Under British Kaira district and Gaekwadi Baroda, the Charotar Patidars master the golden crop — tobacco — and their villages grow into the wealthiest countryside in Gujarat. Status hardens into structure: the marriage circles, the gols, are formalised — the compact of 1869 among Nadiad, Sojitra, Vaso and fifteen others seeding what becomes the Chha Gam, the apex circle of the six.
The Chhappaniyo famine scours the land — and steels the community’s resolve. Sons board ships for East Africa; the first great diaspora begins, and remittances start their century-long work of building schools, wells and temples at home.
The Patidar villages become the backbone of Gandhi’s Gujarat: the Kheda Satyagraha (1918), Borsad (1923) and Bardoli (1928) are Patidar campaigns — and their general is a Karamsad farmer’s son, Vallabhbhai Patel, soon the Sardar of all India.
The community’s long-sought recognition arrives: in the census of British India, Kanbi is formally replaced by Patidar. The name of the land-share holders becomes the name of the people.
In the Charotar’s own Anand, Tribhuvandas Patel founds the dairy cooperative that becomes Amul — the Patidar genius for collective enterprise, now feeding a nation.
Sardar Patel stitches more than 560 princely states into one Indian Union — the son of Patidar soil as the architect of the nation’s map.
The diaspora goes global: East Africa’s families push on to Britain (many via the cruel expulsion from Uganda in 1972), while America’s doors open after 1965 — and Patidar enterprise takes root on every continent.
From the Leu country of the Punjab to the Charotar, from Adalaj to East Africa, London and Chicago — one unbroken thread of farmers, builders and community-makers. We did not appear by magic. We walked here, generation by generation.
Our very names are a history lesson. The village keeper of the pat — the land register — was the patlikh, worn down by daily use into Patel. Under Mughal and Maratha revenue systems, leading families held a pati, a hereditary share of the village land with its duty of revenue; the holder of a pati was a Pati-dar. When the census of 1931 formally replaced “Kanbi” with “Patidar,” the government was only catching up with what the villages had long known: the cultivators had become proprietors, headmen, bankers and builders.
The Charotar’s narwadari and bhagdari tenures — brotherhoods of shareholders answering together for their village — taught the community its greatest skill: collective enterprise. It is the thread that runs from the medieval khadki to the 1869 gol, from Amul’s cooperative dairies to the samaj halls of Leicester, London and Chicago.
Within this larger Patidar world, the six villages — Dharmaj, Karamsad, Vaso, Nadiad, Bhadran and Sojitra — formed the Chha Gam, the most respected marriage circle of the Leuva Patidars of Charotar. Its families intermarried for generations, prospered together, migrated together — and wherever enough of them landed, they did what Patidars have always done: they organised. A samaj in Kampala, a samaj in London… and a samaj in Chicago.
So when we gather here — for Navratri, for a wedding, for Dharmaj Day — we are not just socialising. We are the newest link in a chain of villages, gols and samajes stretching back through Adalaj and Unjha to the plains of the north. From six roots, one bloom.